Apple purchased, factory unlocked iPhone not registering in Middle East

Hi all
I purchased  my 4s, factory unlocked, direct from a high street Apple store in the UK. I activated it via iTunes with an o2 scolling monthly sim.
I am now living in the UAE/Qatar and need to use local pay-as-you-go sims in each counrty.  The phone can see them both but will not accept them.  I tried a reset to no avail and then a full factory reset.  This sent me back to 'out of the box' state but when connecting to my mac, iTunes tells me, I need the original sim to register.  This alone confused me, because the phone wasnt purchased through O2 and I guess I was assuming, that as an apple purchased phone, it would accept all minisims.  Anyway, the original sim is back in the UK, so thats no help and before I go to the local provider to see if they can overide something, I thought I would ask, if anyone here has any clever ideas.
Many thanks in advance.

There is no catch.  Apple offers international warranty on some products i.e. iMac, MacBook Pro etc but excludes the iPhone.  This question has been asked and answered numerous times on these forums and if you do a search you will find the advice is consistent in that there is no international warranty on the iPhone.

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